


Eight Fold

by PunkHazard



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight ways it could have ended for the Wei triplets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. zero;

The crew finds Crimson Typhoon's conn-pod in under an hour, fishes it out of the ocean and pries it open through a gash in the hull, seawater soaking their boots as it spills out. Cherno Alpha's maint crew does the same at the other end of the hangar, both teams keeping their distance from the other, rebuffing any offers of help from the American and Australian crews.

No one sees what they want to; Hu's rebreather is intact but Otachi's claw had ripped through his end of the conn-pod, an open wound through the armor on his back neatly bisecting his spine. A hole in the glass shield of Cheung's helmet shouln't have kept him from escaping the cockpit, but the crew has to untangle his arms from the mass of wires and metal constricted around Jin before they lay him out next to Hu and start cutting away the wreckage.

"If we'd been faster," Chuck snarls under his breath, elbows on his knees a safe distance away, in both Jaegers' line of sight. Herc drags a hand over his own mouth, cool palm over coarse stubble the only sensation he can still feel over the dull buzz of fading adrenaline, and the throbbing in his other arm. No painkillers so close to the end; it doesn't hurt so badly that he'd choose a cloudy mind over full awareness.

"Nothing would have changed," Stacker says, hands clenched into fists at his side. Mako's already scaling the scaffolding around Crimson Typhoon's leg, her movements slow and careful, a far cry from her usual speed. "They were prepared for this outcome."

It isn't the first time Chuck's seen a Jaeger go down, but of all the Rangers to hang on until the end, of all the Rangers in the program he'd wanted to have running point--

"Back to work," Herc says, sweeping the pliers off the closest table and motioning with them at Striker's foot. "We've got some tests to run on this guy before the big day."


	2. one;

「You look like you haven't slept in three days,」 Liu says, opening his door all the way to allow the haggard-looking man standing in the dark in front of his office to limp inside. There are a lot of words Cheung could probably say about his old friend, but nosy isn't one of them, which is why he's here in the first place. 

「Four,」 he says curtly, shrugging out of his worn gray hoodie (it used to be black; Liu remembers buying it for him) and collapsing onto the couch in the corner of the office, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out the light, dim as it is. 「Entire dome's been working nonstop on restoration since the double event.」

「The Breach--」

「Closed now.」

Liu asks, 「You came to personally deliver the news?」

「I was actually looking for a bridge to throw myself off of,」 Cheung deadpans, casually ignoring the strangled sound Liu makes from his desk, 「but then I remembered that you had a couch in your office, and neither of my brothers have bothered coming in here since you moved.」

「Cheung.」

He can't even hide the envy in his voice when he says, 「Marshal's dead, too.」

「Cheung.」

「I know.」 He swallows hard, turns so his face is pressed against the back of the couch and tries to erase the images of the city from his mind, the streets he'd passed, the stores they used to frequent, the restaurants they would be dragged into by owners eager to feed Crimson Typhoon's three pilots. 「I'm tired. It'll pass. Just let me sleep for a week.」

Liu gives him a doubtful look, but asks, 「Would you prefer a bed, or--」

「You could do me a big favor,」 Cheung suggests, slicing his thumb across his neck.

「I would never taint Hong Kong's celebration like that,」 Liu reprimands gently.

「I know.」

「Or our brothers' memories.」

Silence.

「Cheung,」 Liu says as he approaches the couch with a light blanket, dropping it on his head so Cheung can pull it over himself. He looks older, withdrawn, like his bones would shatter if someone tapped him a bit too hard on the shoulder and it's not a look that works for a man who'd spent so much time keeping two unruly brothers in check-- the only one who's ever managed to, probably. 

「I _know_.」

「Does anyone know you're here?」

「I took the tracker off my bike and left my phone,」 the younger man answers, impatiently burrowing into the cover. 「So probably not.」

「I'll keep it quiet for now,」 Liu tells him as he returns to his desk. 「Don't do anything stupid, little brother.」

「Thanks, _dai lo._ 」

_He's fine,_ Liu texts in response to a message from Mako, received hours ago. _But don't expect him to return to the PPDC._

Cheung drops off the grid as quickly and cleanly as he and his brothers had appeared on it, ten years ago. Mako writes the press release after she'd finished cleaning out the Marshal's room. Really, she's not in any state to be writing a press release, but Cheung had known, somehow, and left in her e-mail at least his and his brothers' section for her. All of China knows he had survived-- decorum necessitates that he not disappear. It's short and to the point, as he's always been.

_Wei Cheung has expressed his wish to be left alone while he grieves for his brothers. Violators will be subject to excruciating violence._

Mako bites back laughter and tears while she redacts that last bit and texts Liu. _Please tell Cheung that if he were ever in need of employment, the PPDC could use a media representative. And that I miss him._

The last text she recieves from him is listed under a blocked number, though in theory it'd be fairly easy to track down if she were ever inclined to. He signs it with all three of their names, as they always used to.

_Sorry we couldn't be there. Proud of you. -祥龍虎_


	3. one;

「No time to grieve,」 is the first thing Jin says (unknowingly parroting exactly what the Marshal had said earlier) when the crew gathers around him, hesitant. His right arm and shoulder are layered under a mass of thick white bandages but he motions for a copy of the blueprints, his movements stiff and mechanical. 「Crimson Typhoon's shoulder joint is fine, it's the same model as GD's. Switch them out once she's been salvaged.」

He gets a few sympathetic pats, but backs pointedly away from any offered hugs; the Chinese are thankfully not physical with their condolences. Mako catches his eye from across the hangar, Raleigh at her flank, and he gives her a curt nod in return before turning away. 

_Congratulations; I don't want to talk._

Really, there's only been one other time in his life when he'd felt like he might crumble into dust: that morning Cheung sat in front of him and Hu and looked them in the eye and said, _Ma and Ba are dead;_ then Cheung had said, _but I'm still here,_ and the world solidified again. The tightness in his chest took another few weeks to ease, but when it did, he'd had his brothers.

Long after the rest of the engineers have called it a day, Jin ducks back into the hangar with a pack of shrimp chips and hauls a length of cable over his shoulder, soldering tool in hand, to Danger's left elbow joint. He can only use one arm, but the circuitry is familiar and easy to parse. Mako had consulted him and his brothers on reconstruction with questions about Crimson Typhoon, and it shows here. He knows it intimately, no matter how blurred his vision gets.

"Ranger," Stacker says hours later from the entrance to the hangar bay, just before the first shift of the day begins, "we've salvaged Crimson Typhoon's conn-pod."

"Not now, sir," Jin says distantly, face turned away, hefting a wrench in his good hand and then tapping the Jaeger's armor with the end of it. "Please."

Stacker pauses, shifts the dogtags in his hands and tucks them into a pocket. The half-finished wiring tangled around itself at Jin's feet is a far cry from his usual meticulous work, but what he can see of the cables underneath Danger's armor is as neat as it ever is. Jin glances over his shoulder, follows Pentecost's gaze and slowly unravels a green cord from the cluster. 

Indicating his right arm with a tilt of his head, Jin says, "Work's a bit slow like this."

Stacker approaches, gently squeezes his shoulder and he says, "When you're ready."

That's the last time Jin speaks to the Marshal. He remembers being overwhelmingly grateful for the gesture, as soon as he was done hating Pentecost for taking them into the program. Mako mails him the tags months after the Breach has been closed; it had taken her that long to track him down. He'd stopped picking up calls, only responding to the occasional text from PPDC engineers and he'd added a scrambler to his phone to avoid being traced. 

He receives the discreet, spare package and leaves it unopened for another month; the weight of the tags under the packaging, the familiar rattle of chains alone enough for him to flinch away every time he'd tried. Then he hangs the tags over his door along with his own, so they'd whack him on the forehead every time he walked through and forgot to duck.

Jin's apartment stands in the same place he and his brothers grew up, a soaring testament to human tenacity in a newly-revived real estate hotspot in Shanghai. He'd bought out the top floor and adopted two cats. The three of them have always loved heights.


	4. one;

There's a pile of scrap metal at Danger's feet, jagged pieces of metal heaped against the wall and a dim light from the Jaeger's shoulder. Mako silently harnesses herself into the rig, Raleigh just behind her, and swings over to the conn-pod, landing with a quiet thump to look over its collar. Hu's sitting with his arms crossed over his knees, head lolling back against the mech's neckpiece. Before she has a chance to announce her presence, he cracks one eye open and sighs.

「Hey Mako.」

「Are you sleeping here?」

「Taking a break.」

Mako drops down next to him, kneeling at his side and tugging on his forearm. 「You should rest. Somewhere you can sleep properly.」

「I'm not going back to my room,」 answers Hu, voice flat. He switches to English. "You can tell Becket not to bother as well."

Raleigh sticks his head over the Jaeger's collar, blinking at him before swinging himself down. "How'd you know I was here?"

"You're heavier than Mako." Hu pushes himself gingerly to his feet, mindful of the strained muscles he'd suffered, having been tossed around the Conn-Pod. He knows some people would say that being thrown out of his harness and then swept out of the cockpit is better than drowning in it; clearly none of those people have ever piloted a Jaeger with their brothers.

Raleigh extends a hand, clearly waiting for Hu to grasp it but he just stares the other man until Raleigh awkwardly drops it. Hu gives both Mako and Raleigh a nod, then adjusts his harness before stepping off Danger's shoulder and swinging himself back to the catwalk. The Jaeger's co-pilots are close behind, and when Hu stumbles slightly on his landing (Mako hasn't seen him sleep for two days), Raleigh catches him by the arm and pulls him toward the dormitory wing.

"Come on. We're not gonna take no for an answer."

"Becket," Hu says after they turn a few corners, not resisting but with no intention of making this easier on Raleigh. "Did you dream about your brother? After Knifehead." 

Mako and Raleigh freeze.

Hu even takes a second to appreciate how truly drift-compatible they are before he pins Raleigh with a grim look, dark circles under his eyes visible even in the dim light of the corridor, shadows hollowing out his cheeks. "Yeah," Raleigh answers quietly, shaking off the memory and continuing forward. "I'd dream about when we were kids, sometimes it'd just be that drop, only we won, and sometimes it'd be about us closing the Breach and going out for drinks. When it wasn't nightmares, anyway."

"And when you wake up--" Hu's voice hitches as he's tugged into Raleigh's room, but his eyes remain resolutely unblinking, "and he isn't there?"

 _The youngest,_ Pentecost had said. _I imagine things will be rather difficult for him going forward._

Raleigh steps forward, moving faster than Hu can react to drag the other man against his chest, arms wrapping over his shoulders and squeezing him against the big, soft sweater he'd changed into as soon as he reached Hong Kong. Hu's still in his techie reds, a t-shirt and the worn jumpsuit and not much else. He even _feels_ frigid to Raleigh and, well, Beckets weren't raised to leave a person out in the cold.

"It's hard," he says gently and Hu relaxes involuntarily against him, sapping his warmth. "I know. There's no way to get around it."

"I keep thinking," Hu chokes out, "that if they can't come back to me, I should go to them."

"I know. But you still have to sleep."

Mako's fingers brush over Hu's arm, but she stays back and suppresses the urge to check her watch. They're on a deadline; there's only so much time until the Breach opens again. Hu's acutely aware of it too-- after a few more seconds, he taps Raleigh on the shoulder and squirms in his grip. "Let me go."

"No." 

"Go restore your Jaeger," Hu snaps. "Mako, make him get off me."

"I'll stay here." Raleigh flashes Mako an encouraging smile over his shoulder and manhandles Hu to the bed, tossing him into the cozy nest of blankets and dropping himself into the chair next to it. Under other circumstances, he's pretty sure that Hu could easily kick his ass for it, but the other pilot's condition is hardly at its peak. He can even feel that twinge of pain in Mako's chest at the sight; after all, her memories of the triplets invariably contain all three of them, tall and strong, ready to take on whatever the world throws their way.

Raleigh adds, dragging a blanket over Hu's head and pinning him under it, "I'm useless with J-tech anyway."


	5. two;

Cheung dives, and dives again, shedding pieces of armor as he goes. The parts rise up to Jin while he waits, treading water, staying afloat with help from the pockets of air designed specifically for extra bouyancy in his drivesuit, clutching his left shoulder while his arm dangles. Cheung surfaces again when the first chopper arrives and drops its ladder-- it's been half an hour since Crimson Typhoon's conn-pod had been hurled across Victoria Harbour, so when a paramedic jumps into the water, clips a harness to him and prompts Jin to start climbing, he doesn't argue.

Blinking seawater out of his eyes, Cheung shoves the paramedic's hand off his shoulder and moves to dive again, ignoring Jin when his brother calls his name. He doesn't manage to get far before another crewmember drops into the water, wraps one arm around his neck and drags him toward the rope ladder. Cheung pauses for a few seconds, as if giving in, but once the grip around his neck loosens, he jerks away.

「Get back in the chopper!」 Jin shouts to the medics over the sound of whirring helicopter blades, and then he hops off the ladder, switching places with the two workers who'd come down for them. When he reaches Cheung, he uses his good arm to turn him physically around, shaking him slightly by the shoulder. 

「I have to find Hu,」 Cheung tells him, expression still dazed. 「We can't leave him! Go with them, I'll keep searching.」

Jin doesn't let go. He'd never considered himself the logical one, but for all Cheung's seriousness, it wasn't his rationality that got them into the Jaeger program, or his sensibility that drove the PPDC to allow them a three-pilot Jaeger, or his sound judgment that dragged the three of them to Hong Kong without a clue as to how they would survive there. Big brother's accustomed to defying odds; Jin and Hu have learned to recognize and calculate them. 「Our conn-pod's at the bottom of the harbor by now,」 he says, 「you won't reach him. Just come up.」

「What if it was you? What if he's waiting for us?」

Jin can't even hear his brother over the sound of waves and the chopper, but he doesn't have to-- their drift is strong. He pushes away the surge of anger at Cheung's implication that he _wants_ to give up, _wants_ to leave Hu in their wrecked conn-pod, _wants_ to believe he's dead so they can get somewhere warm and dry and safe, that he's forgotten every promise they'd made to each other that they'll never be alone. 

He spits seawater out of his mouth and tugs Cheung toward the ladder. 「Then I'd want you two to get out of the water and into the chopper before you drown. You're just holding up the salvage team now.」

「I should've stayed,」 Cheung mutters later, in the hallway outside their room. It's empty, all crewmembers working on retrieving their Jaeger, so Jin doesn't feel too bad about turning on him and grabbing him by the collar, teeth bared.

「And what would you have done? You think you can do better holding your breath than our guys with SCUBA gear and equipment?」

Cheung shoves him away, but doesn't fight it when Jin closes in again, slamming his back against the wall of the corridor. He looks to the side, away from Jin's face and says, teeth bared, 「Better than leaving him like we did.」

Jin thinks all this shit is _stupid_ when they have more pressing concerns on their plate, but if big brother insists on a fight-- he pulls his arm back, fist clenched.

"Rangers," a voice breaks in, deep and smooth. Two sets of boots marching toward them. Pentecost approaches them with a folder under his arm, Mako at his flank. Cheung and Jin break apart immediately, falling into step behind him. The Marshal continues, "My office."

"Hu," Cheung asks, "is he...?"

"My office," Pentecost repeats. Mako drops back, not expecting any response from the two of them but reassured when Cheung briefly pulls her against his side and Jin leans down to mutter into her ear, 「Nice work, Mako.」

The Marshal slides his folder across the table when they reach his office, along with a pair of tags. "Your brother did not survive the drop," he says solemnly, knowing the Weis prefer that to any attempts at softening the news. "His lungs were clear after we salvaged your Conn-Pod. It means he was dead before the three of you hit the water."

Jin has never known nausea and happiness to mix, but the bile rising in the back of his throat joins with the urge to cry tears of relief that Hu hadn't been wondering, in his last moments, why his big brothers weren't coming for him. Cheung heaves a dry sob on his left, his hands clenched into fists over his eyes, his body curled in on itself. Jin blinks and his vision clears. He opens his mouth, then closes it, and reaches for Cheung's wrist instead.

"Can we see him?" Jin asks.

"In a few hours."

"Marshal," Cheung says, voice painfully even as he looks up, dry-eyed, but Jin can feel the tremble in his hand, "are we dismissed?"

"You are."

They stand in unison, Jin snatching Hu's tags off Pentecost's desk and slipping them into his pocket as they turn and leave.

「You were right,」 Cheung sighs when they finally reach their room, dragging Jin against him and kicking the door shut behind him. 「It was too late.」

Jin's face finally crumples as Cheung moves to sit on the edge of his own bed. He doesn't really have a choice but to follow, settling next to him with his elbows on his knees. When Cheung nudges him in the side and curls his hand over the back of his neck, he extracts the tags from his pocket, unclips the chain, then passes one plate over. 

「We always knew it was a possibility,」 Cheung says evenly, pressing his fist against his mouth, fingers clenched around the dull edges of Hu's tag.

Jin scrubs at his eyes, leans into the warm, calloused palm at his nape. Cheung's thumb digs idly into a knot at the base of his neck, slowly easing the tension in his shoulders. 「Don't,」 Jin says, swallowing thickly, 「don't talk like you're okay, bro. He was our responsibility.」

「I know,」 Cheung answers, 「but you're still mine.」


	6. two;

That no one else ended up in the hospital after the PPDC fished Cheung and Hu out of Victoria Harbour is a bit of a miracle in itself, almost more than the fact that two out of three triplets had managed to survive the drop. Cheung nearly gives several techs a black eye when they try to restrain him, but when Pentecost and Mako direct him toward the medical bay now that Hu's been stabilized, he goes quickly.

Every second he isn't next to Hu, he's in the hangar during the empty shifts, only an hour or two between long marathons of repair. Mako's the one who finally works up the courage to approach him, ten minutes before the next round is due to begin. Hu had finally woken up.

"He says he wants to see you," Mako tells Cheung as he welds a piece of armor over a finished cluster of circuits. He doesn't answer, but Mako watches him mark the incomplete area with a red flag before setting the welding tool down and ripping off his mask. "He also says he wants to help, but the Marshal has ordered both of you to rest."

"Is he in bad shape?" Cheung asks, scrubbing at his eyes and the dark circles under them.

"Most of the damage is mental trauma from the neural handshake," Mako says as she falls into step behind him, "physically, he injured his shoulder but not badly."

"If he can help, let him help."

"The Marshal has given an explicit order."

"I'll talk to him."

Mako curls her fingers around Cheung's wrist, pressing her shoulder to his upper arm (he's that much taller than her). "I told him you wouldn't agree, but--"

She cuts herself off when he bares his teeth, stopping abruptly. He turns on her, shoulders drawing up and in, same way he used to get whenever he was ready to pick a fight. When Mako backs away from him, expression wary, he shakes his head and visibly forces himself to calm down. "You know what Jin was thinking before he bled out?" Cheung asks, his voice hoarse, the words leaving his mouth like they'd scraped the inside of his throat raw. 

Mako doesn't answer and she doesn't move, but she reaches for his wrist and he lets her grab it. Cheung takes a deep, shaky breath to pull himself together, then: "That if Operation Pitfall failed because Crimson Typhoon couldn't be there, then we wouldn't be able to live with ourselves even if we survived."

It had taken about ten seconds for Jin to lose consciousness from the pain, then he'd disconnected and Cheung had no idea how much longer he'd lived after that. When the PPDC fished himself and Hu out of the water, his youngest brother too caught up in the neural handshake to stay alert after Jin's connection fizzled out, Cheung was ready to cut the PPDC out of his life. It had taken too long for the choppers to pick them up, paramedics trying to revive Jin but failing.

After seeing his injuries-- they looked fatal even to someone who's seen the kind of violence that only happens in Hong Kong's criminal underbelly-- Cheung conceded that it would've been too late anyway. Even if the medics had arrived sooner, there was too much internal damage on top of the open wounds.

Mako's staring at him, so Cheung bites down on the inside of his lip, the pain bringing him back to the present, and he twists away from her. "If I can get this Jaeger fixed even five minutes faster, that's five minutes sooner I can take Hu and get out of here. You understand?"

Hu's sitting up when they arrive in the ward, Stacker standing by the bed, a solemn expression on his face. Cheung ignores the marshal, his first priority to clasp Hu's hand and drag his brother into a tight embrace, pressing their foreheads together, eyes closed. When he pulls away, he gives Stacker a measured look and pulls his shoulders back.

"You can sign Hu's release," he says. 

"I can."

"I request that you do it now, sir. Crimson Typhoon's crew works faster supervised by us."

Stacker looks at Hu instead, the younger man's brows drawn together, jaw jutting forward. "Fine," he says, returning Mako's alarmed look with a pat on her shoulder. The Weis wouldn't be able to rest if they were confined to the medical ward anyway; they'd always responded better to purpose. "On the condition that you both eat and sleep at reasonable intervals, to be decided by your attending doctor. We need all the hands we can get, but not at the cost of another two rangers."

"Deal," Hu answers, allowing Cheung to drop the rails along his bed and steady him when he stands. He leans into the arm his brother wraps over his shoulders, steeling himself against his own thoughts. They have work to do; everything else has to wait. "We start now."


	7. two;

Jin's eyes snap open, the edges of a scream still echoing in the back of his mind, but across the space between their hospital beds, Hu blinks back at him and smiles. They sit up slowly, silently judging for themselves the damage they'd sustained by strained muscles and stiff bandages. 

Hu glances behind him, flashing his brother a hesitant smile before asking, 「Where's Cheung?」

「He'd better be getting us food,」 answers Jin. After all, there aren't many places he could be when they're both unconscious in the medical bay: watching over them or preparing for when they wake up. 「If he gets to walk around, he's gotta be taking advantage of it.」

After a long moment of uneasy silence, Hu asks, 「Did you...?」

「We were all yelling.」

「I know, but I heard--」

Jin hits the button on his bed to call a nurse, gingerly swinging his legs over the side of the bed and toeing the bottoms of the scrubs they've both been dressed in. When the attending arrives, she's braced for something, shoulders stiff and hands clasped in front of her. Hu's already inspecting a pot of flowers set up at their bedsides, scanning the names on the card. He's the one who demands, 「Where's our brother? Where's Cheung?」

She was probably, Jin thinks, expecting 'What happened?' because when she finally answers after a moment of pained silence, she stutters and stumbles over her words. 

_He isn't here._

Hu mulls that over, but doesn't say anything further. The part of Jin that understands completely-- that knows they could take that sentence in two different ways, that only one seems likely at this point, that nothing would change no matter how desperately they need it to not be true-- 

Jin covers his eyes and swallows hard. 「He's dead?」

「Yes.」

「Hu, can you walk?」

No answer, but Jin thanks the nurse before sending her away. Hu doesn't respond until Jin starts to move, hissing through his teeth as he shifts to slide off the edge of his bed. Then Hu comes to him, shoulder dislocated (and recently popped back into place), but his legs seem fine and their helmets kept both of them from concussions. Hu settles next to him, expression blank.

「Don't,」 Jin says, before his brother can. 「Don't start. Don't say it.」

Rational, easygoing Hu and his calm acceptance of anything thrown his way sounds exactly like himself when he says, 「It would've been me.」

「Shut up.」

「If we didn't switch for this drop, it would've been me on the right.」 Hu rubs his face, eyes squeezed shut. His wrist had been hurting, and the strain in his shoulder was a day or two off from complete recovery so Cheung had volunteered to take the right arm. They've been rotating more with time between attacks shrinking-- the third rig in their conn-pod taxes a pilot mentally, but the harnesses up front take care of any heavy lifting. 「Shit, we might've won, he's usually in back...」

Jin tastes blood on the inside of his cheek. His first inclination is to get some on his knuckles so the pain will stop but that course of action hasn't worked in years, not since they'd started running into problems that couldn't be solved with a well-placed elbow to someone's face. Instead, when Hu slumps against him, Jin wraps an arm over his shoulder and wipes his own face before his little brother looks up.

「It's not your fault,」 Jin says firmly. First things first. 

「I know,」 Hu answers, clenching his fists. 「I just meant things might be different.」

The concept of survivor's guilt isn't foreign to either of them, though the actual feeling of it is. Enough psychiatrists have asked if they felt it when they first started piloting. About their parents, about the other kids on the street who got a little cocky in a territory conflict, about fellow Rangers after every wipe. 

_No, _they'd said. _We can only honor their sacrifices by moving forward. Why should we feel guilty for surviving when we were not the ones who caused their deaths?_ __

__It's a well-known fact, that all progress is made on the backs of those who came before. They knew from the beginning that they'd have to step over corpses to do their job and some of those bodies would be their friends. PPDC shrinks had marked them 'abnormal', though it hadn't affected their performance so the brass never followed up._ _

__Jin doesn't feel guilty for surviving and neither does Hu. They'll have to deal with the aftermath of the double event at some point, but Hu's counting on putting that off for as long as he can._ _

__For now, he presses his ear to Jin's chest and holds his breath, feeling more than hearing the deep, slow beat of his heart. The spark of an idle thought ( _what are we supposed to do without a big brother? is that me now?_ ) hovers between their idling neural link and Hu squeezes his eyes shut. 「Asshole,」 he murmurs, voice cracking, 「you don't get to go claiming that title.」_ _

__Jin laughs, but hot tears land on the back of Hu's neck and slip down, past his collar and into his shirt. 「We can do this later,」 he says, trying to inflect his voice with authority but sounding mostly scared and a little hoarse. 「Pitfall now.」_ _


	8. three;

Cheung spends Operation Pitfall in LOCCENT, one arm around each brother's neck as the three of them crowd in front of a control panel. None of them are particularly interested in barking orders with Herc Hansen and Tendo, but they do occasionally shout encouragement into a microphone, mostly on the trip to the Marianas Trench, keeping the teams entertained on the three-hour flight there.

Mako steps off the PPDC chopper exhausted but supporting Raleigh, who's slumped tiredly over her shoulder. (Not out of necessity, Hu points out with a snicker, probably because he just wants to stick to her.)

She walks past everyone, the crews making space for her as she heads directly for her room, stopping only briefly to accept congratulations from a Marshal who looks like he can't decide whether to celebrate or break down weeping. Rangers come down from drifts in their own ways; some want to be with their co-pilots, others prefer to be alone. Mako's always been the latter, so when she shifts Raleigh's arm off her shoulder and ducks into her own quarters, he tries hard not to look like a kicked puppy and mostly fails.

Two days later, the Weis volunteer to help clean out Sasha and Aleksis's room, arranging their belongings in labeled boxes and providing their crew with an itemized list of the contents. Cheung wanders away while his brothers finish printing the list, their expressions uncharacteristically grim as they double-check and begin sealing the containers.

Cheung heads for Pentecost's room, toeing his door open all the way and glancing inside. 

Mako's progress is much slower than his and his brothers'-- three pairs of hands working in perfect tandem speed up any process. She's sitting on his bed, one of Stacker's crisp blazers laid across her knees, fingers plucking at a wrinkle in the lapel, trying to fold it back into place. Cheung's about to turn and leave when she sniffs, takes a shaky breath. Then he knocks, standing in the doorway as Mako turns around.

「Where's Becket?」 he asks, glancing over his shoulder.

「I asked him to give me some space,」 answers Mako, her voice distant but steady.

「You'll need to iron that out. Formal jackets are a pain.」

「I think sensei left it for a reason. I don't know. He wasn't happy with the UN.」

「Take a break, Mako. I can finish up here.」

「You don't outrank me,」 Mako retorts, a trace of her usual hardheadedness bubbling to the surface. She gives him a small, grateful smile when Cheung moves to sit next to her. 「I want to do this.」

「I still have seniority.」 Cheung reaches up, squeezes her shoulder and pulls her against his side. 「You don't have to act tough all the time, you know? Think you're on the streets or something?」

When she answers, her voice cracks and she squeezes her eyes shut, the first sign of any kind of distress Mako's displayed since her last drop. After five years of watching Jaegers go down, every one of their pilots a friend, she'd grown used to pushing aside her own grief. 「I'm a Ranger,」 she says, her face twisting, 「and I have to be strong for my copilot.」

「Your copilot is the last person you have to be strong for.」 Mako doesn't respond and she refuses to meet his eyes, but she slumps against him, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve. Cheung sighs. He's not used to seeing Mako like this. Angry, sure; excited, all the time; impatient and stubborn, that's usual. Mako's been sad, but it had never been the Marshal in a downed Jaeger before. 「Your friends too, okay?」

「Everyone else here,」 Mako says, voice crumbling into a gasp, pressing her face against his chest, her shoulders heaving with each breath, 「has lost so much more. But I still...」

Cheung remembers the days before Crimson Typhoon deployed, when the safe distance from shore hadn't been calculated and the tools to detect kaiju weren't so advanced or detailed, so they made landfall more often than not. Most of the crew couldn't take extended leaves, and not everyone with family near a kaiju landing point could have taken off at the same time or the dome would've been emptied. 

It's not easy, growing up in a Shatterdome. Moments to collect yourself and recover from each attack are few and far between; emotional breakdowns lower morale so crews learn to swallow everything, no time to be stricken or sad or afraid. But that was then, and the Breach is closed. 「No one's gonna think less of you for grieving,」 he tells her. 「You kind of earned it.」

「I miss him,」 Mako says after a few minutes, voice muffled against Cheung's shirt.

「Me too.」

「But I don't wish it was me instead.」

「Good.」

「Isn't that selfish?」

「You could stand to be selfish more.」

Mako laughs and looks up, her nose and eyes scuffed raw, cheeks blotchy and damp. Raleigh would have reassured her that it wasn't selfish at all, but he'd never lived so close to the Breach, hadn't seen the attacks accelerate, hadn't watched the Shatterdome crews stretched thin, nerves raw and frayed. Then she grimaces. 「My head hurts.」

「Crybaby.」

「Jerk.」

Cheung props his chin on top of her head. 「Saved the world but you're still a kid, huh?」

「You're the only one who still thinks so.」

Mako doesn't look around when the mattress dips behind her and Cheung, Hu draping himself across their backs. He leans over Mako's shoulder, pulling the blazer out of her hands and holding it up to inspect it, shuffling back. 「You know the Marshal wore this jacket when he first recruited us? Button here was scratched to hell, I remember.」

「This thing,」 Jin says, pointing out a medal, 「he got for the last drop in Tokyo. Didn't go to the ceremony, went to get your papers processed faster instead.」 

Mako's bites the inside of her cheek, fighting back the sudden, but by now intimately familiar stinging in her nose and eyes. 「He never told me that.」

「He was a private guy.」 Cheung flashes her a wry smirk before glancing at his brothers. 「We were trainees at the time, so he passed the paperwork to Hu to mail out, and of course these two looked at it--」

「-- and we told Cheung about it--」

「-- and got all of us in trouble, except we asked Liu to ah, expedite with the office in Kyoto, since he was out there on some business.」

Hu laughs, handing the jacket back and looking around the room, his expression some mix of sheepish and fond. 「We didn't tell him, but he found out.」

「Anyway, we should let you get back to work.」 Jin moves for the door, pausing in front of it, his hands in his pockets. 「If you need a hand here... we wouldn't mind helping.」

「The Marshal did a lot for us, too.」 Cheung scuffs his boots on the floor as he stands, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. 「More than we can repay.」

「If you could,」 Mako says softly, 「I'd like that.」


End file.
